The music video for 34-year-old French rapper Nick Conrad’s “Pendez les Blancs”(“Hang the Whites”)opens with a jarring visual akin to the title itself: the lifeless body of a white man on a noose, while Conrad (a black man of Cameroonian descent) stands beside him lighting a cigar.

For Matthew Morgan and Jocelyn Cooper, it has been a long, 15-year journey to get the Afropunk Festival from the small, local hangout for passionate message-board friends in the alt-punk space congregating in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, NY, to the internationally renowned entertainment juggernaut it is today.

It has been an oft-repeated refrain that the Afropunk Festival has changed from the punk-centered origins of its inception in the early 2000s—evolving well beyond the brainchild of James Spooner’s titular documentary to a festival powerhouse, with presence in three continents and five cites.

When I was a child, my mom would tell me stories about Ramadan in our homeland of Comoros. Some parts weren’t the most idyllic—the idea of fasting under mosquito nets without air conditioning that close to the equator is not my concept of pleasant by any stretch of the imagination.

Sometime Thursday, Donald J. Trump waddled into the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., and not only blustered that immigrants from the countries of Haiti, El Salvador and the entire continent of Africa are “people from shithole countries” but also encouraged more immigration from countries such…

This weekend, a sea of unapologetic blackness will descend upon Fort Greene’s Commodore Barry Park for Brooklyn, N.Y.’s 12th Annual Afropunk Fest. Instagram feeds and Twitter hashtags everywhere will be peppered with twist-outs and bold prints; your favorite vibe curator will inevitably make a thread of the best of…

A few months ago, I reconnected with a dear friend whom I hadn’t seen in quite some time. We met up for brunch, laughed about prior fights, squashed beefs and updated each other on our personal lives in between bites of truffle fries. In between convos about the escapades that happened during our distance, I mentioned…

I want to say that the first time that I heard Serena Williams called a man was middle school. I can’t say that with absolute certainty as middle school is generally universally awful and grades six through eight are a haze of mob mentality and chocolate milk but nonetheless, it wasn’t until my teen years that I truly…

In just a few months, Bresha Meadows will finally be out of prison. However, it won’t be due to her case being dismissed, or being granted bail. Moreover, she will not be directly returning home. Instead, due to accepting a plea deal, a 15-year old Bresha will have her time served commuted and sent to a juvenile…

Today, millions of American women will exercise their right to protest by participating in “A Day Without A Woman” — a strike aimed at highlighting the “value that women of all backgrounds add to our socio-economic system—while receiving lower wages and experiencing greater inequities, vulnerability to discrimination,…

As I’ve written about before, the life of a Knicks fan is one of pure masochism. It’s season after season of delusionally elevated expectations followed by crushing disappointments; of seminal moments defined by ultimate failures; of dysfunctional roster after dysfunctional roster under the harsh glare of NY media.…

Despite the pending apocalypse’s greatest efforts to wipe out the human population in one fell swoop, the bulk of us have managed to make it out of 2016. The stroke of midnight came, folks drank their champagne - or if your name rhymes with Pariah Larry, threw out your earpiece and decided to defer New Year, New Me to…

There will be plenty of time in the coming days, weeks and months to do a full post-mortem on what just happened last night — exactly how and why every projection was wildly wrong, what could have been done differently, whether or not Mike Pence is a sentient Death Eater, et cetera. There are a lot of assessments that…

I wish I could say I was surprised that Derrick Rose and his cohorts were found not liable on all counts in the civil trial accusing them of rape, but I’m not. Disappointed, certainly. I’ve indicated previously that I believe he did it, and in following all of the details of the case — from the motions filed to the…

I’m currently on a kick of acquiring basic life skills that escaped me because of either growing up in poverty, city living, or laziness. For example, not too long ago I properly learned how to ride a bike. The mild corniness of adult bike lessons notwithstanding, I picked it up quite quickly, and ended up spending a…

Assuming that I haven’t yet woken up from what I was thoroughly convinced was a fever dream, we are less than 50 days away from Election Day 2016. Labor Day has come and gone, and we are facing a credible possibility that the next four years of the American executive branch will be led by the sentient chunk of peach…

In an ideal world, we would spend the next few hundred words articulating the significance of a Black woman achieving rapid career acceleration in the entertainment industry after decades of hard work. Leslie Jones's addition to SNL, an institution Whiter than tampon commercial underwear, is a major accomplishment. As…